I haven’t been able to find too much information about Artistic Potteries, which is sometimes known simply as “Artistic”. It’s listed in both Chipman’s and Lehner’s books on pottery. It seems to be agreed that the pottery produced items starting around 1940 and definitely was no longer in business by the 50s.

The company factory was supposedly in Whittier, but later was listed in Los Angeles. It’s not certain whether or not they moved the factory or whether as Lehner says that they opened up showrooms In Los Angeles and sold the pottery from there instead - I tend to think the latter since when I googlemapped one of the addresses it seemed to be a residential area - not much room for a factory there.

I have come across a number of different items made by Artistic including vases, ewers, figural planters (swans seem to be a favorite), figurines and freeform and standard shaped bowls and planters. Many items are marked with a script stamp reading “Artistic Potteries California” or some variant of that, often including “Co.” or “Inc”. Some of the pieces also have an ID number. I’ve also seen stamps that aren’t written in script as well. Occasionally the word “Artistic” appears on it’s own without the word “Potteries”. In addition, I believe there are some pieces that were never marked, or may have been marked with stickers that have since been removed.

One of the most common treatments that Artistic items appear in is an interesting mottled pink and mint green blended glaze. The first piece that I got from them had this very glaze. According to Chipman, this signature looking glaze is very similar to that used by Knowles, Taylor & Knowles and West Coast Pottery. I’ve seen other color combinations of this blended glaze, most notably one that included more green/blue than pink.

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